CHAMBON, Marie-Marthe. - Born at La Croix-Rouge on 6 March 1841, died at Chambéry on 21 March 1907. A country girl, she entered the Visitation monastery at Chambéry in 1864, where she served as a lay sister until her death, working in the refectory and the boarding school. After a vision of the bleeding Crucifix, she dedicated herself to the veneration of the Holy Wounds, of which she had daily and striking visions. She received the stigmata in 1875.
CHAMBORD, Henri-Charles-Ferdinand-Marie-Dieudonné d’Artois, Duke of Bordeaux, Count of. - Head of the senior branch of the House of Bourbon and claimant to the throne of France, born in Paris on 29 September 1820, died at Frohsdorf on 24 August 1883. His father, the Duke of Berry, heir to the French throne, had been assassinated in February 1820, and the infant Henry was thus hailed as the “miracle child.” In 1821, upon receiving the eponymous castle, he exchanged the title of Duke of Bordeaux for that of Count of C. After the abdication of his grandfather Charles X following the revolution of 2 August 1830, Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans (son of Philippe “Égalité”), refused to recognize him as king of the insurgent people of Paris, and the child likewise went into exile in England and Austria, from which he never returned.
By Charles X’s design, he was educated in the rigidly conservative and absolutist tradition and soon became the focal point of all legitimist currents in Europe, rising to become their most authoritative exponent. After Charles X’s death and the resolution of disputes with the partisans of his uncle Louis, Count of Angoulême, he was acknowledged by all French legitimists as Henri V, in opposition to the Orléanist party. On 7 November 1846, Count Henri of C. married Archduchess Maria-Teresa of Austria-Este, by whom he had no issue. The upheavals of 1848 and their political consequences increasingly alienated his mind from the principles of liberty and popular sovereignty; the intransigent circular issued at Wiesbaden on 30 August 1850, rejecting the idea of a plebiscitary restoration, closed off any prospect of his return to the throne. He urged his followers to abstain from any collaboration with public life during the Second Empire, even declaring by 1856, in concert with the Duke of Nemours, his refusal to accept the tricolor flag. Devoutly attached to the Pope and the Holy See, he championed and defended the temporal power (1866), sympathized with those who enlisted in the papal forces, and was especially close to the heroic de Charette, with whom he was also related by kinship. In 1871, indeed, he did not hesitate to declare that, once restored to the throne, he would immediately reclaim the temporal rights of Pius IX. A restoration of the French monarchy then seemed imminent. After the fall of Napoleon III, Henri of C. was able to set foot once more on French soil (10 July 1871), but he refused to replace the white lily flag with the tricolor, even though he had by August 1873 reached a reconciliation with the Orléanists, whereby Henri V would again be king of France and Philippe II of Orléans, Count of Paris, his heir to the throne. His reaffirmation of principle and refusal of any compromise regarding the flag at the time of restoration (letter of 27 October 1873 from Salzburg to Chesnelong) wrecked every possibility of monarchical restoration. Further negotiations held at Versailles with MacMahon likewise failed, always because of C.’s intransigence; the National Assembly thus definitively proclaimed the Republic on 25 February 1875. Henri of C. withdrew for good to Frohsdorf in Austria, where he died, leaving the memory of a most religious, generous, and upright man.